


your tender head, my easy heart

by naheka



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Amnesia, Light Identity Kink, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2020-04-12 09:44:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19129522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naheka/pseuds/naheka
Summary: Everyone else got to talk to Ric. Jason figures it's his turn.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to behindtherobinsmask for giving this a quick lookover and helping my anxious feelings about how this part ends :)

Jason has never actually seen Dick drunk. He’s heard, from Roy and Kory and all the other heroes Dick attracts to him like flies to honey, the loyalty he instills without even trying. He thinks maybe Tim has seen it, thinks maybe he himself would have, if he’d grown up without the dip into Lazarus and all the crazy that came after. Maybe Dick would have taken him to a bar on his twenty-first birthday, ordered him his first legal beer and his first legal shot and teased him about how easy Jason could shoot it.

Maybe the Joker will convert to Catholicism and join the seminary. Jason knows better than to let himself yearn for the unattainable.

All his lazy daydreams of could-have-beens aside, he knows that Dick doesn’t drink much. Bruce was never hesitant in hiding his disapproval, and Dick is positvely straight-laced when he’s not in the Nightwing suit defying orders and masterminding suicide missions.

“It’s weird,” he says too no one, lurking outside a Bludhaven dive bar. “Don’t you all think it’s weird?”

His comm turns itself on. “What about this isn’t weird?” Oracle asks, and her voice is too quiet and too sad for Jason to be an asshole about it. He and Babs always got on alright, after all, and it’s a bridge he’s not ready to burn yet. “What are you doing, Hood?”

“Everyone else got to come have their teary eyed plea,” Jason says, removing his helmet and stowing it in the case on the back of his motorcycle. “I’ve got a bat on my chest too.”

Barbara snorts. “Your funeral,” she says, and cuts their connection.

Jason cracks his neck, shucking his jacket lazily over his bike. “Won’t be the first one.”

 

The bar is full but not packed, and the jukebox is going strong, rattling out one classic rock hit after another. Jason elbows his way to the back wall and goes belly up to the bar. “Whatever’s cheap and on tap,” he orders, and fishes out a few crumpled bills from his pocket to cover it. 

“A mistake,” the man leaning against the wall says. “Watered down and warm, if you’re lucky.”

Jason looks at him. “I know you?”

The man grins, sharp and humorless, his hair shaved brutally short and the skin across his knuckles scarred over. “Just being a good Samaritan.”

“Didn’t know those existed in the ‘Haven.”

The man looks him up and down, his eyes hooded. “My good deed for the year.”

The beer arrives. Jason sips. It is, in fact, watered down and room temperature. He grimaces, and the man laughs, low and soft and half-teasing. “Well that’s just mean,” he says, and then offers his hand. “Jason.”

“Ric, no ‘k’.” 

They shake, and Jason tightens his grip when Ric starts to pull away. “Full disclosure, Ricky, but I already know who you are.”

Ric’s face shuts down. He jerks his hand away. “I told that fucking--”

Jason slams him against the wall, arm across his throat, lifting until Ric’s on his toes. “Careful,” he says, and then shrugs ruefully. “I’m also surprised I care that you insult her.”

It’s a testament to the vibe of the establishment that no one seems to care or even really notice that Jason’s just bodychecked a regular up against a wall. If it was Dick he’d already have escaped the hold; Ric isn’t even trying. “If you’re sweet on her, I’ve got bad news for you. She’s holding a torch for a different dick, if you get my drift.”

“Of course I get your drift, that was incredibly unsubtle.” Jason lets him drop to the floor. “And it wasn’t even punny. You’ve lost your touch.”

Ric shrugs, uncaring, and reaches past Jason to steal his beer. He drains it in four long gulping swallows. “Thanks for the drink.”

Jason sighs, performatively put out. “And we didn’t even get to catch up.”

“Save it for the second date,” Ric suggests, and saunters away, disappearing into the crowd and headed for the exit. Jason watches him go, analyzing: his jeans don’t fit quite right, held up by a belt and thinning in the knees and the thighs, his sneakers beat up and tatty. 

“Hey,” the bartender says, annoyed. “You gonna pick up his tab, or do I need to get a bouncer?”

Dick’s tab is fifty bucks of crap whiskey; he should be out cold on the floor, not roaming the streets. Jason drops a hundred and makes for the front entrance, emerging out into the cold rainy night air.

The street is empty, save for a few homeless people crashing in darkened store fronts, a group of college students bursting out from the bar around the corner. Jason frowns, then sighs. His phone beeps in his pocket. 

**Unknown Number:** _told you so_

Jason rolls his eyes. He goes down the alley, around to where he’d parked his bike.

Ric is straddling it, feet planted on the ground to keep himself balanced, one hand curled lazily around a handlebar and the other dangling at his side. “Hey stranger.”

It’s such a Dick move, so in character for him to give Jason the slip and then sprawl himself possessively across something and flirt, that it makes Jason hesitate. 

Ric’s self-pleased look melts into a scowl. “I’m acting like him, aren’t I.”

Jason shrugs. “If you walk like a duck and quack like a duck…”

“And shoot the duck in the head and have it wake up a chicken,” Ric shoots back. “Don’t pretend it means anything more than Gotham desperate to see a dead man in my face.” He sighs, turning his head away. He’s lit by the flickering streetlamp above, the short cut of his hair highlighting the ugly twisted scar across his scalp. 

“Did it hurt?” Jason asks.

Ric blinks. “What?”

“You know.” Jason makes a gun with the fingers of his left hand and presses it to his temple. “Bang.”

Ric stares at him. “Yes, getting _shot in the head_ hurt.”

Jason nods. “Good to know. For reference.”

“For reference,” Ric repeats, and shakes his head. “You’re more fun than the others.” He stands, slow and listing, and almost falls over when he climbs off the bike. “Were we close?”

“No.”

Ric nods. “That’s why you’ve taken longer than the rest to come see me.”

Jason shrugs. “Tell you the truth, I wasn’t really planning on seeing you at all.”

“Is that so?” Ric’s tone is disinterested; he’s started to stumble towards the back entrance of the bar. “I’m positively touched by your affection.”

“You couldn’t handle my affection.”

“Saucy,” Ric murmurs, shooting Jason a loose grin over his shoulder. “What’d I say about waiting for the second date? What kinda girl do you think I am?”

There’s a joke about whiskey dick on the tip of Jason’s tongue; he swallows it down. “A drunk one,” he says instead. “You need help getting back to your barstool?”

“Nope,” Ric says cheerily, hand braced on the brick wall for support. “I know the way.”

“I can see that.”

Ric pauses, just outside the door to the bar. “Did you get what you came for?”

Jason considers him. “I’m not sure.”

Ric looks away, eyes glassy and whiskey-flushed. “Me either.”

The door bangs shut behind him with a creak of rusted metal. When Jason gets on his bike the seat’s still warm.

++

“He’s not in tonight,” the bartender says, when Jason asks for whiskey neat. “Tuesdays he works.”

“Works,” Jason repeats, eyebrow raised. “I heard he lost his license.”

The bartender shrugs. “He comes in just before closing, flush. He’s working somewhere.”

Jason nods, thoughtful, tapping his fingers on the bartop. “Get me a beer too. And if you’ve got one back there that doesn’t taste like warmed over piss, I’d take it as a favor.”

“This is the ‘Haven,” he’s told. “There’s no favor here.”

 

Ric staggers in at half past three in the morning with a black eye and a butterfly bandage on the sharp jut of his right cheekbone, down to his jaw. Jason doesn’t move from the booth in the back he’s settled into, a small stack of smudged glasses at his elbow. He watches Ric and the bartender exchange a few words, and leans back against the cracked vinyl plastic as Ric ambles over. 

“Rumor has it you’re waitin’ on me.” Ric winks his good eye, the other almost swollen shut. “Rumor’s the bartender.”

“I was,” Jason says, “but now I’m thinking about going for the bird over at the bar.” Said bird is sixty if she’s a day, bottle blonde in a shirt patterned with parrots. She’s also passed out onto the bar, a lit cigarette dangling limply from her slack mouth.

Ric laughs, head thrown back and nose scrunched up. He slides into the booth across from Jason and immediately sprawls out, arms spread out behind him. Under the table, one of his legs slides against Jason’s. “That was funny. You’re funny.”

“Am I,” Jason says mildly. “That’s new.”

“I’m new,” Ric murmurs, and the toes of his shoe nudge against the ankle of Jason's boot. “Brand new.”

“You’re on an adrenaline high,” Jason diagnosis. “You been fighting?”

“I been winning.” Ric fans out a handful of cash, maybe two or three hundred. 

“You sure you wanna flash that around in such a fine establishment as this?”

Ric tilts his head back, exposing the bare column of his throat. “Won’t you protect me, big bad Hood?”

Jason tenses, eyes flitting around the room--it’s almost empty, and the music and the alcohol will have dulled out their conversation--but still. “A birdy been whispering in your ear?”

“A bat,” Ric says, but the cash disappears into the inner pocket of his coat. “I cussed him out, if that makes you feel better.”

“Sorry,” Jason informs him, “but you giving him crap is business as usual.”

“Ah,” Ric mourns performatively, “the bite of not knowing. I’ll give him a kiss next time.”

“Gross,” Jason says, and swirls his empty glass. “Buy me a drink?”

“It’s only fair,” Ric says agreeably, and slips out of the booth towards the bar. 

Jason fiddles with his phone, feeling out of sorts. He’s waiting for a text, for a voice in his ear asking him what the fuck he think he’s doing, but his comm is silent and his phone is dark. Ric returns with four shots balanced in his fingers, and he lays them out between them in a line. 

“Generous,” Jason says, and shoots one back. It’s tequila, sharp and burning. 

“Impatient,” Ric chides, and lays out a few wedges of lime and a salt shaker. “Let’s do it right, little wing.”

Jason starts, dropping the shot glass. It rolls away, bouncing off the booth and clunking onto the floor. “What did you say?”

Ric blinks at him. “I said let’s do it right.” He licks the inside of his wrist, eyes still fixed on Jason. “What did you think I said?”

“You called me--” Jason cuts himself off. “Nothing. Nevermind.”

Ric’s eyes narrow. “I reminded you of him.”

“You always remind me of him,” Jason says truthfully.

Ric snarls. He reaches across the table and grabs Jason by the wrist. “I’m not him,” he hisses. “If you came around thinking you could flash me a look and buy me a drink and I’d slide right back into the spandex--”

“I’ve never thought anyone could make you do anything with a look and a drink,” Jason says honestly. “Except topple you into bed, maybe.” He smirks, mean and pointed. “You were always generous with your affections.”

Ric slides his thumb from Jason’s wrist down his forearm. “Take off your jacket.”

Jason strips it off, breaking Ric’s grip only as long as it takes to drop his jacket onto the seat beside him. Ric touches the unblemished bare skin on the inside of his elbow, then drags his nails back up to Jason’s wrist, leaving red lines in the wake of his fingers. “And you? How generous are your affections, comparatively?”

“They’ve had some overlap.”

Ric’s eyes sharpen. “Oh?”

“I don’t kiss and tell.”

Ric pouts. “The names would mean nothing to me, you know.”

Jason shrugs. “It’s not always about you, prettybird.”

“Prettybird,” Ric murmurs. “That’s nice, isn’t it? Say it again.”

Jason shakes his head. “That’s not how this is gonna go.”

“But it is going to go, isn’t it?” Ric tilts his head. “Am I reading it wrong?”

“You haven’t read anything right since you left Gotham.” Jason pulls one of the remaining shots towards himself. “You’re falling behind.”

Ric knocks back one of the shots. “Now we’re tied.” When he puts the glass down his hand trembles.

“You’re crashing,” Jason realizes. “What’s your routine?”

“We’re doing it,” Ric says, and drinks another shot. “I usually do it all by my lonesome, but since you were waiting around for me…” he trails off with a shrug. “Is it better when you’re not alone?”

“Sometimes. Depends on who you’re with.”

Ric nods, thoughtful. 

“Here,” Jason says, and hands over his jacket. “You’re shivering.” 

“All the things people told me about you,” Ric says, “and none of them included the word ‘chivalry’.”

“Well,” Jason says, “who’re you gonna spill my secrets to?”

Ric laughs again, softer and more genuine than the first time. He tucks Jason’s jacket around his shoulders. “There’s more that miss him? Than the Gotham ones, I mean.”

“More than you could count.” Jason waits for another question, but Ric is silent, eyes hooded and a frown pulling at his split bottom lip. “What happened to doing it right?”

Ric’s eyes snap up. Then he relaxes. “Of course,” he says, “let’s make the last one count.” He goes to lick his outside of his hand and Jason stops him, fingers curled around Ric’s wrist.

“When I was a kid,” Jason tells him. “I used to cut school and smoke out the butts of cigarettes in abandoned lots.”

“Bad boy,” Ric says, “I like it. I bet _he_ got straight A’s.”

Jason shrugs. “I wouldn’t know. Don’t interrupt.”

“Can you interrupt a conversation you’ve already had?”

“We’ve never had this conversation,” Jason says, and just like that Ric is laser focused. “Anyway, a lot of people sleep rough in those lots, you know, and there was this woman who used to do palm readings for fast cash, five or ten bucks at a time.”

He catches Ric’s hand, pulling it to extend across the table and turning it face up. He drags his thumb across Ric’s palm; his fingertips rest on Ric’s pulsepoint and he can feel it flutter, feel it race. “What does mine say?” Ric asks.

There’s a line running straight down Ric’s lifeline, slashing it in two. “Says you die young,” Jason says. He traces another line, jagged and pitted in the center with a tiny scar. “Or that you live forever. Whichever gets me what I want.”

Ric leans close. He bites his lip slow, then releases, the pale pink flooding to red as the blood rushes. “What do you want?”

“When I was a kid,” Jason says, just like an echo, “I used to cut school and watch your training videos.” He swallows, watching Ric watch his throat work. “You were the most incredible thing I’d ever seen.”

Ric’s head tilts, he shifts his weight forward and forward, an agony of inches. “Have we ever had _this_ conversation before?”

Jason considers a lie--dimly, in the back of his head, everyone he’s ever met is in complete agreement that this is the worst possible idea he’s ever had--and when he speaks his voice is hoarse and low. “No. He’d never have--no.”

Their noses brush. “Do you want to come home with me?”

“Yes,” Jason says, and kisses him. Ric’s scruff scratches his cheek, his hand is clenched in the front of Jason’s shirt. Ric tastes like coffee and tequila and Jason’s gotta taste like ash and the same. When the kiss breaks Ric’s face is unreadable. 

“But you won’t,” he says. 

“I’ve done a lot to him,” Jason says, his fingers still resting on the center of Ric’s palm. “But I won’t do that.”

They shoot the last of the tequila in unison. When Ric leaves he takes Jason’s jacket with him.

Jason watches him go. He’s breathing like he’s just taken on all of the Rogues at once; he’s also got an erection that makes him feel like he’s sixteen again, hard at the slightest brush of tongue. He fumbles out more than enough money to settle the tab and gets outside at almost a run, only stopping when he’s around the corner and hidden from view. He doubles over, hands on his knees and panting. 

Slowly, his breathing steadies. He straightens, hand pressed to the stitch in his side, and exhales. “For fuck’s sake,” he mutters, because he’s got no one to blame but himself. He gets on his bike and kicks the engine into the roar, leaving his helmet off. He needs to feel the wind on his face.

 

He’s halfway to Star City when he sighs, grumbles internally at his own conscience, and comms Barbara’s private line.

She picks up immediately. “Did it help?”

“Are you asking for me or for him?”

“Both.”

Jason hesitates. “I didn’t think--that it would be like that.”

She hums at him, understanding. “Almost like the uncanny valley, isn’t it?”

“Like he’s haunting himself,” Jason agrees. “How long should I steer clear of Gotham?”

“A while,” she says. She doesn’t even have the grace to pretend to be sorry about it. “I’ll vouch for you.”

“Babs,” Jason says. He pulls off into a rest stop and cuts the engine, looking out at the moon. “He called me little wing.”

She makes a sound like he knifed her in the back. “Jason--”

“I’m not lying, for fuck’s sake, why would I lie about that?”

“There’s been no signs,” she says tightly, “no tells, not even a flash, and you talk to him twice and he’s remembering you?”

Jason is silent for a moment. “Maybe B told him,” he offers. “He warned him about me, so maybe--”

“Maybe he shared petnames the two of you used? Because he loves discussing emotional bonds?”

Jason looks to the sky for guidance. “This was easier when the only thing I wanted was to kill you all.”

“Whatever,” Barbara says dismissively. 

“I died,” Jason protested. “I went crazy!”

“Yeah? Who hasn’t?” She sighs at him. “I can’t give you orders.”

Something eases in Jason’s chest, a tight band dissolving. He doesn’t know what he would have done if she’d tried to make him play good soldier for her. “What can you do?”

“I could cry,” she says thoughtfully. “Get really snotty about it too, hiccups and everything, beg you in the baby girl voice.”

“Jesus,” Jason says, grimacing. “I’d rather fight with you about who’s the boss of me.”

“Jason Todd,” she says, and she could have middle named him, if she wanted, could have rattled off his old social security number and his maternal grandmother’s maiden name and laid bare all his painful secrets he thinks he keeps well hidden. The all seeing Oracle tucked into the crook of his ear. “What kind of man are you?”

The comm clicks once, then goes silent. Jason can hear the breeze through the trees, ruffling the leaves, and the quiet sounds of a quiet night: the cicadas singing, the owls hooting, the distant blare of a train horn. “Goddamnit all,” he swears, and turns back to the ‘Haven.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cage fights are held out by the docks, because Bludhaven really is every bad movie trope wrapped up into three dirty districts and the hundred rotten cops that patrol them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not beta-ed. big thanks to sli for help with plotting.

Cage fights are held out by the docks, because Bludhaven really is every bad movie trope wrapped up into three dirty districts and the hundred rotten cops that patrol them. It doesn’t take much to get a location, because no one is trying all that hard to keep their illegal activities hidden. Jason dyes the white out of his hair, ditches his trademark jacket for one only slightly less distinctive, and calls it a day on hiding his identity. 

He thinks he could have worn the neon bat across his chest and received about the same amount of scrutiny--that is to say, almost zero. It’s not surprising; things tend to go better in underground black market gambling when no one looks too closely at anyone else’s anything. He slips in with the crowd and mills about at random, casually assessing the operation out of the corners of his eyes. 

It’s pretty much what he expected, nothing supernatural or weird like there would be in Gotham, just down on their luck people spending money they don’t have on down on their luck fighters who couldn’t hack it in legal boxing or MMA. He shuffles over to the big bet fights, scanning the matches and the accompanying headshots.

Ric’s cage moniker is ‘The Comeback Kid’. Jason snorts when he sees it, then slips the bouncer at the back door a couple of hundreds and winds his way through the locker rooms, snagging a towel from a rusted hook on the wall and slinging it around his neck. Ric is getting ready, shirtless in gym shorts with another man crouching before him.

“You know,” Jason says, leaning against the doorframe and propping his foot behind him. “If you wanted to dip your toe into racketeering, my operations are more lucrative.” He sniffs at the towel on his shoulder and grimaces. “And less moldy.”

Ric, sitting on a low bench, looks up at him, face oddly blank. “But not _no_ mold, huh?”

Jason spreads his hands. “Still got to keep some of the aesthetic. I’m a Narrows kid at heart.”

The guy currently wrapping Ric’s knuckles snorts, his hand rising up to flip Jason the bird over his shoulder without turning. Ah, local rivalries. Ric laughs, head tipped back and eyes closed. When he looks at Jason again they’re barely slitted, twin glints of blue under dark eyebrows. “Wanna tap in as my cutman?”

Jason rolls a shoulder. “Sure you trust me like that?”

Ric’s eyes do flash at that. “I don’t trust anybody.” 

His current cutman scowls. “I already got paid, and I’m ain’t givin’ it back.”

Ric waves a hand. “Whatever. Beat it, Malone.”

“Beat it, Malone,” Jason repeats, snide and mocking, and laughs when the man knocks his shoulder against Jason’s on his way out. 

Ric wiggles his fingers at Jason, the half-done tape flapping. “Didn’t think you’d be back, to be honest.”

“You took my favourite jacket.”

“You gave it to me.”

Jason sighs, coming off the door and moving to crouch at Dick’s feet. “I guess that’s true, ain’t it.”

Dick spreads his legs, lazy, the flex of his lean chest, the ripple of his abdomen. The scars that mar them. “I’ll call it even, after tonight.”

Jason flicks his knee, right in the reflex spot, and smirks when it makes Ric jerk and scowl. “Keep your eye on the prize, ‘Kid’.” He snags Dick’s wrist, holding it in front of him and starting to rewrap his knuckles. “And how does me doin’ you two favours make us square?”

Ric pouts at him, performative and so different from the puppy eyes Dick used to pull, none of the genuine emotion or flair. Just like everything else, the alien expressions on his face are unsettling, a flat affect atop familiar features. But still sharp, still intuitive, because just as Jason thinks it he shifts, the pout falling away into something more calculating. “Did you put money on me?”

Jason snorts finishing one hand with a tap to the inside of Ric’s calf and a beckoning of his index finger. “Switch.”

Ric lifts his left hand obediently, then immediately buries the right into Jason’s hair. Jason tenses, automatic, someone so potentially dangerous right in his personal space, nevermind how rarely and carefully Jason allows himself to be touched. Ric laughs, a mean edge to it. “What’s the matter, baby? Don’t like me so close?”

Jason refuses to react, his hands stead on the tape, on the delicate bones of Ric’s wrist and his uneven knuckles, swollen from injury and repeated use. Ric makes an unsatisfied noise, then drags his nail down Jason’s temple, drawing blood. “If you’re not gonna play with me, then--”

Jason grabs him by the throat and stands, lifting until Ric’s toes are kicking at the dirty cracked linoleum. “I don’t think you want to play with me, _Ric_. Not if you can’t remember the rules.”

Ric’s fingers scrabble at Jason’s grip, his wrist. It’s futile, and more than that: it’s stupid. He’s standing so close, Dick would have already kicked him in the junk and hit three pressure points while Jason was crumpling to the ground. It’s that, more than any real effort on Jason’s part, that curbs his anger. This isn’t Dick, isn’t a trained fighter, isn’t someone aiming for Jason’s soft spots because he doesn’t know them. He drops Ric and steps back, unsettled at his loss of control.

Ric wheezes on the floor, gasping and retching. He flops over on his back and laughs at the ceiling, a gargling harsh series of hacks. Jason grimaces at the sound of it. “I knew you’d be fun,” Ric rasps. He rubs at his throat, almost rueful, and when he speaks again it’s softer than anything he’s said so far that night. “I just wanted you to look at me.”

Jason, still breathing careful and deep, shakes his head, eyes fixed on the far wall. “You never learn. I’m always lookin’ at you.”

“At _him_ ,” Ric spits, and the vitriol makes Jason blink. 

He sighs. “Really got a stick up your ass about it, huh?”

Ric is curled in on himself, eyes burning and the red marks around his throat in the shape of Jason’s fingers. “I just wanted you to look at me,” he says again, softer and almost sadly. “Like you did in the bar.”

Jason sighs. “No,” he says. “I didn’t put money on you.”

“Good.” Ric scrubs his hand over his shorn head. “I’m throwing it.”

“What?”

Ric stands, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck, his earlier fragility disappeared. “I’m throwing the fight. It’s a better paycheck.”

Jason gapes at him. “I--” he shuts his mouth with a click. “That’s smart,” he amends. 

Ric’s back is to him now, head slightly tilted. The scar stands out against his scalp, ridged and sharp, puckered around the edges. “Gonna watch me fight?”

“You gonna make it worth watching?” Jason leans against a rusted row of lockers, one ankle crossed over the other. 

Rick does turn then, smiling over his shoulder. He winks. “If you’re watching…” He reaches up, slow and easy, and Jason lets him drag the pad of his thumb across Jason’s eyebrow, up to his hairline, the small streak of blood he wipes away. Ric licks his finger clean. “For luck,” he murmurs, and blows Jason a kiss.

++

Jason watches: he’s looking for Dick’s flair, his innate raw athleticism, the way he’s off the ground more often than on it. He wasn’t lying, about cutting school just to watch footage of Dick Grayson fly. It ran in his head on a loop, every time he missed a landing or stumbled on a rooftop, the anger and the bitter envy atop the yearning want. 

Ric doesn’t fly, which niggles in Jason’s head for reasons he’d like to think are unrelated to how much he wants to see it again, and his attacks are hard and sharp, designed for utility rather than ease of movement or grace. But he turns to the crowd after landing a particular hard right hook, laughing with his arms held aloft and his lip split, and it’s not nothing. 

_maybe_ he sends, to a blocked number. There’s barely a pause before he receives a reply.

_not good enough_

Jason sighs, but he doesn’t disagree. It’s the second round, and Ric is throwing the fight. He’s doing it well, and Jason wonders if he’s throwing it at all or merely giving in, his sloppiness showing the edge of minimal training and lack of stamina. When the bell rings, he slips under the rope and crouches in front of Dick before Malone can beat him to it.

Ric blinks at him through one eye, the other swelling shut. “Hood,” he says, around the fat lip.

“Ric,” Jason says, and Ric smiles up at him, his blue eyes and his purple bruises, the fresh drop of blood welling at the corner of his mouth. 

Malone, one hand on the ropes, hands Ric a water bottle, scowling furiously at Jason. “What do you care,” Jason snaps, snatching the first aid box from his hands. “You already got paid.” He globs coagulant onto a q-tip and smears it over a small cut high on Ric’s left cheekbone. 

Ric is still smiling, a little punch drunk, a little high on adrenaline, maybe a little concussed. “I like it when you’re mean to other people.”

Jason cracks an ice pack in one hand and presses it against Ric’s cheek. “Do you.”

“Mhm.” Ric tilts his head into the touch. “Tell me something you never told him.”

Jason leans close, the roar of the crowd and the bell ringing again, the chill of the icepack. “Win the fight,” Jason tells him, “and I’ll tell you three things.”

“Three,” Ric says, delighted, then his brow furrows. “Win the fight?”

Jason shrugs, just as the bell rings again, more insistently. “Your choice.”

Ric’s gaze sharpens. “My choice,” he murmurs, and his fingers curl into fists. “Mine.” He stands, and cracks his neck, shaking out his shoulder. “Don’t look away.”

Jason slips back under the ropes into the crowd. He’s never been able to look away, not even when he wanted to, not even when he couldn't remember why, not even when he hated with an intensity so strong it wiped all his other emotions away.

Ric is looking at him, back half turned to his opponent, the dim flickering fluorescent lighting on the ripple of muscle under his skin, not as defined as it would have been when Dick was in Nightwing shape, but still more than Jason honestly expected. Ric is still smiling with half his mouth, a quirked upturn just barely-there, and it doesn’t drop, not even when his opponent cracks him in the left kidney, a sucker punch that garners both whoops and booing from the spectators.

Ric retaliates with a haymaker, so telegraphed Jason winces, but it connects and the tension in the room ramps up, the crowd thundering its approval. Watching fights has never been Jason’s thing, not when it’s amateur hour like this. Like how doctors can’t watch those shitty dramas on television during prime time. But he made a promise, and he doesn't look away, not once, not when Ric’s nose breaks, blood splattering across the thin, cheap mats. Ric locks eyes with him, his swollen eye, his split lip, Jason’s fingerprints across his throat.

Then Ric straightens, turns, and smashes his elbow into his opponent’s shoulder, spinning him sideways. It’s a good hit, disorienting and effective, and Jason watches Ric blink, those long pretty lashes against his cheek, the way they flutter when before they open, almost in slow motion. Then he straights and turns with a palmstrike to the sternum that lays the guy out, no showmanship or flair, just a brutally hard blow to the diaphragm and the flat thump when his opponent drops without so much as a yelp, drops like he’s dead. And the shocked silence across the room before the bloodthirsty, deafening, roar.

Jason vaults the ropes, letting them spring him to his feet, and catches Ric before he falls, turning him to be cradled carefully into Jason’s chest. “I did it,” Ric slurs, fingers scrabbling at Jason’s bicep. “Did you see? Were you watching?”

“Yes,” Jason says tightly, eyes scanning the crowd. Malone’s gone. “C’mon kid, let’s get you patched up.”

++

“Aren’t I older than you?”

Jason lays the kit out onto the small wooden bench, crouched again between Dick’s knees in the dingy locker room, the _dripdripdrip_ of blood on the floor, Dick’s head hanging low and letting his nose run, fingers pinched at the bridge. Jason nudges Dick to scootch sideways on the bench. “What?”

“You called me ‘kid’. But I think I’m older than you.”

Jason cradles Dick’s face in his palm, turning it into the dim light. “Aren’t you like, mentally twelve or something?”

Ric licks the edge of Jason’s knuckle, all that he can reach without moving his head. “Didn’t you die or something?”

“Or something.” Jason thumbs gingerly at Ric’s split lip. “You’re lucky,” he declares, withdrawing back to his haunches. “No stitches.”

“You promised.” Ric’s gaze is electric, compelling. Jason can't look away. “I did it for you, you know. Because you told me to.”

“You did it because you’re honest, “ Jason tells him. “Because you were honest before Bruce got to you. We all were.”

“I did it because you were watching.” Ric’s palm drags across Jason’s shoulder, down and around his bicep. “I don’t want to talk about Bruce, Hood. You promised.”

“Jason.”

Ric smiles, the lazy curl of his lip under his swollen eye. “ _Jason_.”

Jason shakes his head. “You’ve said my name before, don’t try to play me like that.”

“Jason,” Ric just repeats, dragging it out playfully. Jason rolls his eyes. “A kiss,” Ric counter offers. “If you don’t wanna spill your secrets.”

Jason flicks the tip of his nose chidingly, tweaking the break and making Ric wince. “I’m a man of my word, Ricky.”

“Ric.”

“Ric’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” Jason says, “and I fought a supervillain called 'Granny'.”

Ric wrinkles his nose up. “Gross. That wasn’t on the video tape.”

Jason ignores him. “And I know for a fact that your moms used t’ call ya ‘Dickie’, so don’t get ahistorical on me.”

“That accent,” Ric murmurs, and two of his fingers slip across Jason’s jugular, his pulse point, stilling to a rest in the hollow of his throat. “Could give a guy ideas.”

Jason mirrors the motion, his fingers on Ric’s neck, tracing the edges of the bruises. “My ideas aren’t always so good.” He drops his hand. “Don’t tell the Bats or nothin’.”

“Like they take my calls.” Ric pops an ice pack with his knuckles, then press it over the left half of his face, the coy act dropped just as quick as he’d taken it on. “Ow.”

“They’d take your calls in a second, and you know it.”

Ric blows a raspberry at him. “Go collect my winnings, cutman. What am I not paying for you?”

“‘Bout that. There gonna be problems?”

Ric sighs, standing with a groan and a stretch. “I can handle Matches.”

Jason, leaned forward to pick up the ice pack, stumbles; he tries to stand too abruptly and barks his shin against the bench. “What?”

“I said I can handle Malone.” Ric looks at him, confused. “He’s just a middleman, it’s not like I’m legit.”

“I thought you--” Jason stands, rubbing the back of his head and affecting a neutral expression. “What’s Malone’s full name? His first name?”

Ric shrugs. “I dunno. Jimmy, maybe? Or… John?” He shrugs again. “Like I said, he’s barely my manager. He’s not even close to a friend.”

Jason narrows his eyes. “You playing me again? Because that’s gonna get pretty old real fast.”

Ric blinks. He appears to be genuinely confused. “What? Dude, if you came all this way to get info on a cutman for a low rent fight club, I’m going to need more than three personal facts and some flirty touches.”

“No,” Jason says quickly and almost absently, his brain whirring. “No, of course not.”

Ric’s confusion is moving quickly into irritation. “If you have somewhere better to be--”

Jason closes the distance between them, quick, backing Ric up against the row of lockers. “Baby,” he murmurs, pitching his voice all low and rumbly. “How about you go collect your winnings, and take me out for a drink?”

Ric’s pupils dilate, first one and then the other, the sliver of blue barely visible around the black and through the swelling. “Okay. But you better deliver, or stop _your_ playing.”

“Like I said,” Jason calls out after Ric as he leaves, “I keep my promises.”

The door creaks shut, cutting off Ric’s little laugh, and Jason listens to the silence: the drip of a leaky pipe, the rumble of the next fight already underway, the crowd and the bell. 

“How long,” Jason says aloud, “have you been listening?”

The door into the back hallway opens soundlessly. Matches Malone, the easy drunk and the low level cutman, steps out, but when he speaks it’s the Batman. “Not long. What did you promise him?”

“None of your business; this isn’t Gotham.” Jason’s mind shutters, counting back the seconds, the last few sentences they’d shared. He doesn’t think even Bruce could play it cool, based on what Babs has said, if he’d known little facts are slipping through Dick’s brain trauma. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

Bruce is utterly still, but his eyes flick sideways. He might as well have shuffled his feet. “I… check on him. Once in a while.” His tone is stilted, rough.

Jason sighs. “Only you would think it’s weird to admit you love your kids.” He crosses his arms across his chest. “Him not throwing the fight gonna cause him issue?”

“I’ll take care of it later tonight.” Bruce tilts his head, considering. “You came back to see him. Unexpected.”

Jason keeps his breathing smooth and his muscles relaxed, but inside he tenses. 

Bruce’s eyes, under all the makeup and the prosthetics, narrow. “You’re hiding something.”

Jason fixes his eyes on the wall, considering his options. Bruce is worse than a dog with a bone on the most mundane, nevermind something connected to his eldest son. “I kissed him,” he blurts, a calculated loss. “Well, he kissed me, but--”

Bruce punches him in the face, sending him staggering back, arms pinwheeling for balance. “Really,” he groans. “Again?” Sure, it was pulled, and sure, Jason saw it coming and didn’t move, but still. Ow.

Bruce growls, shaking his hand out, and his stance is all Batman now, none of the crabby old man he was pretending to be. “How could you,” he spits. “I never would have expected that of you, not even you--”

Jason straightens. “Hey!” He stabs his finger in Bruce’s direction. “None of _that_ happened, and what the fuck do you mean, ‘not even you’? Fuck you!”

Bruce breathes hard through his nostrils. “Explain.”

Jason snorts. He turns away, probing gingerly at his smarting cheekbone. “I don’t have to explain shit to you, _Dad_. I don’t work for you anymore.” He counts his teeth with his tongue--and out of the corner of his eye, sees movement in the window, just outside in the hall. He grins at Bruce, sharp toothed and edged with insanity, the green pits behind his eyes and in his soul. “And neither does _he_. And he’s not uninterested, and to be honest--” Jason flicks his tongue out, drags his upper lip between his teeth, cocky smirk like he’s eighteen and hot shit again. “I’m not either--”

Bruce closes the distance between them, grabbing Jason by the collar and slamming him into the wall, hefting him up. 

Jason laughs raggedly, the breath knocked out of him. “I’m taller than you,” he gasps, and Bruce shakes him like a misbehaving puppy. 

“You will explain what you have been doing,” Bruce snarls, “and what you are planning, and you--”

“Malone!” Ric is standing in the doorway, mouth gaping, shocked. Then his face sets and he starts forward, fists clenched. “Put him down. Now.”

Bruce’s face goes flat, then disappears under Matches like he’s pulling on a mask, his posture shifting, his body rippling. He drops Jason with a growl, turning with a scowl set over his features. Even though he hadn’t just one second prior, he suddenly smells strongly of cheap beer. “Just clearin’ up a misunderstanding,” he says, with the hint of a slur. 

Ric hasn’t relaxed his fighting stance, his mouth set in a grim angry line. “Get away from him,” he snarls, and the possessiveness there, the sheer warning, makes Jason pause. If he’s sensing it, so is Bruce. 

“S’alright,” Jason says soothingly, and shifts himself so he’s pointed at Ric, his back half-turned on Matches. “I can take a hit.”

“He hit you?” Ric almost vibrates with fury. “We’re done,” he spits at Matches, “Don’t come around me and my fights ever again; find a new night to work cut.”

Matches looks at Jason, and those eyes are all Bruce, flat and furious all at once. Outplayed, Jason thinks, and revels in the flare of triumph. It’s not every day you the Bat at manipulation. Without another word, Matches walks away. 

“I’m fine,” Jason says, as Ric gets all up in his space and squints at the very faint bruise just beginning to bloom on Jason’s cheek. Behind Ric’s back, where Matches can see it just as he leaves, Jason wiggles his fingers goodbye, a gloating little wave. The door slams and Jason smiles.

“You look pretty pleased for a guy who just got clocked by a limping Irishman who served in the Great War.” Ric thumbs at his face, and his smile has gone less pointed than it has all night: almost soft, almost fond.

Jason steps back, cracking his neck absently. “He’s not that old.” He looks Ric up and down. “And I got better things to think about.”

Ric snorts. He turns, bending down, to dig around in the medkit, still open on the low bench. “He knocked my tooth out once, did I ever tell you?”

Jason goes very still. “Excuse me?”

Ric straightens, a fresh ice pack in one hand. “I said, you’re lucky he didn’t knock out any teeth.” He smirks, flirty and a little dangerous. “A little blood is sexy, but gap-tooth smiles wouldn’t suit you.”

“No?” Jason affects a wounded look. “Not innocent enough?”

Ric laughs, easy mirth fading into something quiet and wondrous. “You don’t look at me funny when I do that.”

“Laugh?”

“Yeah.” Ric shrugs. “They all looked at me funny. I don’t know if it’s because I sounded too similar or not at all.”

Jason considers him. “I don’t know,” he admits, after a moment. “I don’t think I knew him well enough to tell.” He doesn’t remember the sound of Dick’s laugh, not grown up Dick, Nightwing Dick, _Batman_ Dick. Not through the anger and the resentment and the green green haze.

(He does remember Robin’s grin, gleeful and bold under the moon, his body stretched out against the night sky; he remembers teenaged Dick’s half-smile, a little unsure, a little angry, the way it looked almost genuine when Jason landed a clean hit just right during their spar.)

Ric preens. “That’s why you’re my favourite.” He fans a small wad of cash in his left hand. “Baby, lemme buy you a drink.”

Jason tilts his head. Ric, the shaved head and the bruised knuckles and the mean slant to his mouth Dick never managed to make look natural, even when he was spitting mad. The absent father in his shadow and the dead brother crawled out of his grave. “How about,” he says, quiet and slow, the words tipping out of his mouth before he can swallow them back. The echo in his head of his own voice _not uninterested_ : “I take you back to mine?”

Ric swallows, the bob of his adam’s apple and the way his eyes flick to the side, almost demure. “Me?”

_he knocked my tooth out once, did I ever tell you?_

Jason’s best smile, the Todd-Wayne smile, the Narrows kid faking it until he makes it at the prep school smile. “Yeah,” he lies, smooth and easy as anything, easy as pulling the trigger. “You.”

++

Ric bumping against his shoulder, grinning with teeth tinted red, the hallway light flickering above them. Jason’s phone held low and down, just out of his sight.

 _okay_ , he sends, with a few quick taps at the keyboard. _I got him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm on tumblr @ nahekalei

**Author's Note:**

> yeah because I thought 'you know what would be good. starting ANOTHER wip' this one is not going to be the monster that my other one is (which I swear I'm working on and have not forgotten), but will probably have 2-3 more parts of similar length.
> 
> let me know what you think and I'm on tumblr @ nahekalei for specific comic stuff and my main is @ sunspill


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